Dear self,
In losing you

Days seem blurry
Nights seem scary

Heart grows weary
Eyes turn teary

I lost the merry
I lost the power to write my story

Happy New Year
One and all.
Bet you didn’t know -
Today is my Birthday.  
Yep - I am a New Years Baby.
Happy Birthday to me.
I sing it to myself
Because everybody else
Is too hung over to
Carry a tune.

So…. we will start
A brand new year
Together at HP.
But I feel like
I got nobbled -
I have to start it
A whole year older than
I was on New Year’s Eve,
And you all get to stay
the same age  
As you were last night.
****** bigtime.
       ljm

Gazing deep into the well
Where hope was thrown
With abandon so unthinking,
I see no small reflection
That could tell me if
The sun will shine again.

I see the place where parity
Was smashed against the wall
And opportunity ran down the shaft
And disappeared in darkness.

I have a penny that I brought
But I never got to toss it.
All the wishes it embraced
Are left there in my pocket.
          ljm.

Stop berating
Start appreciating

Stop denigrating
Start Congratulating

Stop befuddling
Do more cuddling
ljm

So poised she is sitting there in the arbor of the Palestinian Café in this oh so cosmopolitan New England city. Small by city standards, but close enough to a city that it labels itself so. As she sits there preparing to write in her journal she is reminded of an earlier work of hers that was published in an online zine in Santa Cruz. She makes a mental note to return to that piece and post it on her own website. She has so much to do... but time runs… no… time doesn’t run… it doesn’t even exist. Life runs out the clock and thus by the end of evening there is only the lying of the head on the pillow and then the rollover and then the slow sink into semi-unconsciousness—then oblivion. "Oh, unblemished oblivion! How seldom we visit. I love your featurelessness, your lack of glitter and lights, your abundance of nothing. It’s what I love about you—the emptiness."

Once upon, what "is"
Has no "never be's"
Pictures, now, are strange to me

A snapshot back to a certain future
Laughter shared; tears, too
It precedes my doubtful memory
Pictures, now, are strange to me

Once upon, what "is"
Lives indefinitely
Unaware of what will never be
Pictures, now, are strange to me

Printed pieces of boundless time
Whose citizens are full of life,
Safe from looming trajedies
Pictures, now, are strange to me

Once upon, who "is"
Are now all ghosts
Free, from framed captivity
Pictures, now, are strange to me

Santa stole my wife
enslaved my kids as elves
and oh dear, for the reindeer
he took my dog as well
But Christmas is still Christmas
ain’t no season to be sad
I’m taking some comfort, knowing
Mr Clause is also bad
So let’s not judge the other
for I’ve been naughty too
and if you too haven't been so nice
Well…a Merry Merry Christmas
to you

~
A fire built within

We come together
we break apart

A wind that blows past
and does not return

Carnival of light
moving colors
in the overcurrent

Where is heaven above?

You'll only hear
the hummingbird
skyward bound

Before finally combusting
somewhere in
the upper atmosphere

The resulting cloud
is probably still up there
— more proof that it pays
to shoot for the stars
~